Just Noticed

This blog is commemorating the tenth anniversary of each day of the Rwandan genocide. To-day's post on failed peace talks between the RPF and the Rwandan interim government.

Rwanda on their consciences...

When John Lloyd left the New Statesman last April over the Iraq war, he published a final article (excerpted here) entitled "The left has lost the plot" ( — by defending sovereignty in the name of anti-imperialism, opponents of war undermine their claim to champion the oppressed — ). Lloyd mentioned "a Canadian-sponsored report, The Responsibility to Protect" and said it was a "brilliant summation of the arguments for stripping tyrants of sovereign inviolability."

One of the co-chairs of the commission that developed the report was former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, now president of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization that seeks "to prevent and resolve deadly conflict."

Along with Stephen Ellis, ICG's Africa director, Evans has just published an essay in Le Monde entitled, "After the Rwanda genocide, memory is not enough."

In future, the international community most be better prepared to respond to such situations when they become explosive. Part of the response consists in dispensing with preconceived notions that have naturally spread far and wide in world where so many have had to fight with every ounce of strength to rid themselves of colonialism. The sovereignty of a state is not a license to kill. It implies a responsibility protect one's own people. Once one deliberately renounces this responsibility or once the state is incapable of exercising it, it becomes part of the larger responsibility of the international community.

The threshold for military intervention must also be raised: loss of human life, real or feared, on a grand scale, large scale ethnic cleansing, real or feared, brought about by forced expulsion or other means. It must always be implemented according to principles that take into account cautious criteria such as well-founded intentions, last resort, proportionate means and a reasonable hope of success during an intervention that will be worth the damage caused.

Focusing the "humanitarian intervention" debate on "the right of intervention," will assure the continuance of the controversy over whether such a right exists. Changing the perspective in favor of that of the victim and pleading in favor of a "responsibility to protect" will create the possibility of a genuine consensus. This may prove to be the most lasting contribution of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, sponsored by the Canadian government, and of which the 2001 report, "The Responsibility to Protect," is gaining ground, slowly but surely.

[...]

A few signs of progress are nevertheless visible. When the UN mission to the Congo had to confront massacres in the city of Ituri, in the east of the country in 2003, France [despite some vexatious snickering] took the lead in an international response by organizing "operation Artemis." This operation secured the city of Bunia and its airport for three months, pending the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.

[...]

Many nations have Rwanda on their consciences. The path to erasing this stain does not lead through commemorative ceremonies but through effective actions.

Sex Scandal!

Dominique Ambiel, 49, chief spokesman for blowhard prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, was arrested in the presence of a 17 year-old Romanian prostitute in the night of Monday to Tuesday, April 20-21, in the wealthy 17th arrondissement, Le Monde revealed yesterday. He will be tried on 7 June in the 15th Chamber of the Paris correctional court for having "sollicted, accepted or obtained in exchange for payment, relations of a sexual nature from a minor who engages in prostitution, including on an occasional basis," a crime punishable by 3 years in prison and a €45,000 fine, in accordance with article 225-12-1 of the penal code, passed on March 4, 2002, "on resorting to the prostitution of minors or particularly vulnerable persons."

He was arrested in flagrante delicto by a vice squad and he then heaped scorn on the police which got him a second charge for "insulting behavior to police officers."

Ambiel has wasted no time in announcing his departure: "Out of consideration for the prime minister and given my responsibilities, I have decided to leave my post several weeks earlier than anticipated, in order to express myself freely about the malicious allegations that may result from this incident," he said in a written statement to Le Monde.

He came to work for the prime-minister in May of 2002 and was charged with protecting the latter's image. Head of a TV production company, Ambiel had an impressive array of connections which he called on while running the government's communications office.

Toward 2 am, on Tuesday April 20, Ambiel left the prime minister's residence to return to his home in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine). According to his version of events, he parked his car at home and then realized that he had forgotten an important file that he needed for a meeting the next morning. He says he turned around to go back to the office.

At a traffic light at the intersection of boulevard Pereire and avenue des Ternes at around 2:30 am, a fight supposedly broke out between two prostitutes in a bus shelter. He claims one of them ran toward his car and that he attempted to lock his doors but mistakenly unlocked them. The young woman then supposedly took a seat in passenger side his car, speaking incomprehensibly. Ambiel says he drove onward to help the girl. At the next light, he claims he pulled over and asked her to get out. "I dropped her off less than two minutes later and about 300 meters further down the street to put her out of harm's reach," Ambiel wrote in his statement.

It was at this precise moment that a team from the night anti-criminality brigade (BAC) appeared in an unmarked car. [...]

Continue reading "Sex Scandal!"...

M. l'imam bousiller

We've all been somewhat preoccupied with little matters like work and ¡No Pasarán! hasn't been exactly up to the minute — so you may already be aware that Imam Abdelkader "wife-beater" Bouziane (there must be some mistake! In French, bousiller means "to bust up," or sometimes, "to bump off"), who had been expelled, is now to be permitted to return:

The court suspended the government expulsion order, reportedly expressing "serious doubt" about its legality.

...the government has vowed to appeal the decision with new information.¶ Speaking on a visit to Corsica, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said he would be sending the court "additional elements of information which justify the expulsion".¶ His government has 15 days to provide the court with the new information, before a fuller ruling is issued in a few weeks' time. ¶ In the Lyon court, the lawyer representing the interior ministry, Georges Holleaux, alleged that Mr Bouziane, 52, had called for jihad (holy war) in France.¶ However, this allegation was not made before Mr Bouziane was deported. Mr Bouziane's lawyer argues that his expulsion "violated several fundamental liberties". ¶ Mr Bouziane has lived in France for about 25 years and has left his family - reportedly including two wives and 16 children - behind. [emphasis added]

This is a revealing and embarrassing development. It seems that even French authorities are affected by the anxiety to have done with the problem of Islamism in France and it is driving them to hasty measures such as this. Now the Interior minister is unable to provide justifications; he is only able to provide promises to deliver them. Even the government's lawyer, no doubt well prepared for his appearance in court, can only argue facts that clearly didn't determine the decision to expel Bouziane in the first place. Next time, fellas, use your heads!

Consumer Spending Falls

Some of youmay think I'm being malicious by harping on France's economic woes but I'm not. I think many indicators are pointing to a genuine trend and I'm simply recording them as they appear. For example:

PARIS, April 22 (AFP) - French households curtailed spending sharply in March, reflecting a cautious outlook in the face of unemployment fears, a stance that indicates further spending declines in the coming months, analysts said Thursday.

Consumption of manufactured goods fell 1.4 percent in March from the previous month, according to the national statistics office Insee, compared with analyst consensus expectations of a decline of just 0.4 percent.

What's Healthier, a French Quiche or a Big Mac?

Writing from the heart of Roquefort cheese country, Mort Rosenblum provides an interesting Associated Press article on France's love-hate relationship with McDonald's.

Most interesting of the long article (which I read in the Los Angeles Times) was this sentence:

French nutritionists Jean-Michel Cohen and Patrick Serog report that a Big Mac is much healthier than quiche lorraine. [My emphasis]

Is there anybody who would be kind enough to inform José Bové of this? (And to keep reminding him thereof on a daily basis?)

(More news about the truth concerning America's allegedly terrible food habits)

The Fire Last Time

The horror: a French voter reacts to Le Pen's victory

To-day marks the second anniversary of Jean-Marie Le Pen's greatest ever political triumph. Let's remember it with the gravity that such an event deserves because the papers sure aren't. I can find no mention of it in the press save for this article in le Parisien. Since that day, the Front National has continued to put down roots in the French political landscape.

Yet, while, when taken together, all the far-right parties got 16.61% of the vote in the regional elections last month, the FN itself only got 14.7%, or 300,000 votes, a 0.5% drop over its surprisingly strong showing of 1998. The FN has not seen the advances it had hoped for and now has fewer regional elected officials than it did in 1998. It's strongest showing this year was in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (where Le Pen was not personally able to run: he's registered his home address elsewhere for tax reasons). In the first round, the Le Pen list got 22.95% — a drop of 3.5% from 1998 — and two points less in the second round. The only successful FN candidate who wasn't already an incumbent was Marie-Claude Bompard who now heads the regional council for Vaucluse, Orange-Est. Her husband Jacques has been mayor of Orange-Ouest since 1995.

Yet it's not all good news. The FN has again had convincing success in the previously left wing Nord-Pas-de-Calais. The FN's second best showing was in Picardie and the party also did well in Oise. And it has confirmed the trend of rising support in areas outlying urban centers and in rural areas: Centre, Normandie, Champagne-Ardenne, all of them areas that went against the Maastricht treaty in 1992. The FN also picked up voters in Midi-Pyrénées and Poitou-Charentes, Limousin, Auvergne and Pays de la Loire. However, in the Paris region, Le Pen's daughter Martine had an embarrassing night: 10.11% (12.26% in the first round) in a region where her party had received 16.5% in 1998 and where her father got 14.45% in the last presidential elections.

Seeing the expression on the face of the man above, I am reminded of the words of Farid Laroussi — a Franco-Algerian professor of literature at Yale who has recently taken us citizenship — in an editorial published last December in Le Monde, the subject of my first post at LOTF. He wrote

...while there may always be things to be criticized, they are less decisive, less cutting, than suffering the judgment of more than five million of my former compatriots who, during the last presidential elections, told me by voting for the far-right candidate that they would never want me around.

Unemployment, Finances, Sarkozy and Chirac

French unemployment figures have been revised upwards and now officially stand at 9.8% or 2.68 million people, a full percentage point above the eurozone level. In 2003, there were 67,000 fewer employed than in 2002, due in large measure to government cutbacks intended to help stave off a looming crisis in public finances. (The government employs one of every five French workers, meaning that one three French citizens is either employed by the government or dependent on someone who is.)

One hundred thousand government employees were laid off but this was off set by an increase in hiring among so-called fixed "contractors" (i.e. temps) — which would indicate that the number of unemployed may rise still further when such contracts begin to expire if contractor hiring isn't maintained or itself off set by hiring in other sectors. However, the FT quotes Jean-Louis Mourier, identified as an economist at Auriel Leven Securities, as saying that companies should start hiring again in the latter half of the year, thereby increasing consumer confidence.

In news related to this post: data leaked from the finance ministry indicate, also according to the FT, that the government no longer believe they can reduce the deficit (which is greater than $11 billion) to less than 3% of GDP (a Maastrict treaty requirement) for the next fiscal year.

The AFP is now reporting that newly appointed Finance minister Nicholas Sarkozy has announced an even larger freeze in public spending and requests for spending cuts to be made individually to every ministry, including an €800 million cut for Defense.

Some have remarked that, given the herculean and thankless task of fiscal reform, it's no surprise that Chirac gave the Finance ministry to his newest and brashest political rival following last month's cabinet reshuffle (see also this realvideo segment (1:10) from the BBC). Obviously, the assignment is a poisoned chalice.

My post of February on LOTF quoted Sarkozy on his intention to run for prime minister: "I will run for leader of the UMP and no one can stop me!" During a heated telephone conversation, the right honorable minister Sarkozy added, "I'll be the candidate because I am the best. I'll run against [prime minister] Jean-Pierre [Raffarin] if I have to and, what's more, I'll win." Many people think this is simply a political rivalry, however I made sure to include the following paragraph:

This is not the first time that Sarkozy and Chirac have battled over the PM's seat and, of course, we have reason to suspect that there is more to this than meets the eye. In his book (published last year and to which I have referred before), editor Guy Birenbaum writes (p. 98) about "political disputes and other internal frictions that are experienced by all parties and which, most of the time, are 'sold' to the public as so many battles among men and women, mechanical clashes, conflicts of trends, if not of ideology when, at the outset, they cover over banal personal matters. [...] How much longer [did] we have to wait to learn that the waring between Nicholas Sarkozy and the Chirac family was not in fact rooted in the 1993-95 betrayal when the current minister of the Interior supported Edouard Balladur in the presidential elections, but rather in the break-up between the former mayor of Neuilly [Sarkozy] and the president's daughter [Claude Chirac]? [...] In February 2003, when the tensions between the Elysée Palace, Bernadette Chirac and the minster of the Interior [Sarkozy] seemed to be rising again, only Eric Mandonnet of the magazine L'Express would describe the real cause of the dust-up: 'I will never forgive him because he has penetrated my privacy,' he quotes Chirac as saying crudely [... Eric Mandonnet, "Chirac-Sarkozy: la guerre froide," L'Express, 30 janvier 2003]." [emphasis added]

Picasso Espied, Spurned

The Paris Police Museum is exhibiting 40 years worth of documents from police spying on Pablo Picasso. The documents were stolen by the Nazis and then from the Nazis by the Russians only to be unearthed and returned in 2000.

Among the documents' revelations: Picasso applied for French citizenship in 1940 (moments before you-know-what) and was rejected on the grounds that he had Communist sympathies. The police began spying on Picasso when he arrived in Paris in 1901. (Here that, John? You weren't the only one!) One report "painted the 19-year-old artist as a rebel who 'sometimes stays out all night.' It said his concierge had never heard him express subversive opinions but that Picasso's French was so bad that he was hard to understand at all."

NYT, Reuters, WP, ABC, VOA, et al All Come Before Fox...

A filler compiled from wire reports in the San Antonio Express News states that

The New York Times is the Web site most often used as the first source for Google News' stories.

Reuters, the Washington Post, ABC News and the Voice of America filled out the top five on a list prepared by Newsknife.com. ...

"According to our research, the sites at the top of our rankings are highly relevant at the top of our rankings as credible news sources that present major news promptly," said a message on the site. In other words, "They're good sites currently doing a darn good job.

Et alors? you may ask. And so?

Only this. If French news media are to be believed: the only thing Americans watch all day long is Fox News; there is no other expression for Fox News than "rabidly extremist"; and all that all media outlets engage in all day long is French-bashing of the type that is on Fox News.

As it happens, Fox News isn't even on the top 12 media outlets Americans turn to. So will French media change their tune?

Non. Are you kidding?! That would mean putting brakes on their Yankee-bashing with regards to caricaturing Americans as stupid, trigger-happy, and "rabidly extremist". And that, vous savez, won't happen any time soon.

Lire la version française

Saddam Victims in Houston for Artificial Hands

Hello, sorry to have been away so long, but, as Douglas wrote on April 7, I've been traveling through that hell-hole of misery (to quote Arlette), the United States of America, more specifically through Texas for research on a book about the Texas revolution, with the Alamo and all.

As it happens, I'm currently in Arizona (a Comfort Inn motel on Phoenix's Apache Drive), and I won't be back home to Paris before next Sunday, but after that, I'll be back in form (hopefully).

As usual, I am always amazed at the acts of generosity, even tiny, that perfect strangers are always willing to perform for one another in this country. Twice, while hiking, in Palo Verde canyon and in the Superstition Mountains, I was asked whether I needed water, and offered not just part of a bottle but the entire bottle itself. Not a single second of hesitation, and with an attitude entirely natural. On another occasion, I witnessed a drunk guy trying to pick up a Hawaiian girl, only to be offered a handful of cash so he could get a taxi home. She was insistent he take the money, and not offended one bit.

But let's get back to the raison d'etre of this particular post. In Houston, I picked up an issue of the Houston Chronicle, which published a story that proves my point of view wrong and the Chirac and Zapatero position as being the correct one: Due to their horrifying capitalist system, Americans are arrogant, money-loving, and self-centered, without an iota of fraternal humanity in them, and life in Iraq was much better before those capitalist pigs started their war for oil.
But let's let Eric Berger tell the rest of the story:

Memories of losing his right hand in an Iraqi prison, Qasim Kadim says, are sharpest on very cold nights. The remaining stump feels like a block of ice.

Kadim, a victim of Saddam Hussein's bloody regime, may never have to experience the painful, chilling feeling again. Now in Houston with six other amputees, Kadim will soon receive a $50,000 bionic arm courtesy of several journalists, doctors and hospitals.

After he learns to flex certain arm muscles, the 46-year-old Baghdad appliance importer will be able to curl his fingers, make a fist and perform many of the everyday tasks he now struggles to accomplish. The bionic arm is so advanced, it has "intelligent" sensors that know when to delicately hold a champagne glass or firmly grasp a tool.

As miraculous as this new limb will be, Kadim says, it's just one facet of the six-week odyssey to the United States that he and his fellow Iraqis are taking. The other half is perhaps even sweeter, the gregarious father of seven said with a smile. He relishes introductions to all that Texas has to offer, from chips and salsa to rodeo.

"It is a very beautiful feeling to be here," Kadim said through a translator. "There is nobody who doesn't want to come and see the States. It is a dream come true."

(Poor man: that he doesn't realize the intrinsic nature of Americans and their society. Tch, tch...)

The seven Iraqis' right hands were surgically removed, and a crosslike tattoo carved between their eyes, because Saddam blamed businessmen dealing with foreign interests for the country's failing economy. The regime's punishment was intended to intimidate other business owners looking to trade in international currencies.

Kadim, who traded in foreign currency, including dollars, was importing cigarettes in August 1994 when he and other merchants were rounded up by the Mukhabarat, Saddam's secret police.

For two months, he said, special police beat him and prodded his body with electric rods, seeking information about who his trading partners were.

"I expected to be killed," Kadim said. "Many others were."

After being held by the police for about eight months, Kadim found himself in a courtroom with eight other businessmen who, after a 30-minute "trial," were convicted of working in foreign currency. His defense lawyer, Kadim recalls, never spoke.

After their amputations in March 1995, Kadim says, the men were kept in a prison hospital for three days. Nurses would give them injections for the pain but to no effect.

"I believe it was water in the syringes," he said. "It was part of the psychological torture."

Then the men were released. Kadim says his family brought 10 vehicles to pick him up, threw a party and celebrated his emerging from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison alive.

The Western allure of the Lone Star State, in fact, seems to be most captivating. Among his requests, Kadim asked to meet a real cowboy or cowgirl.

On Thursday, he broadly smiled when introduced to Ashley Guest, a 15-year-old high school rodeo champion from Crosby. After shaking her hand, inquiring about the nature of barrel racing, Kadim offered an unexpected comment.

"That," he said, "sounds very dangerous."

Too bad Kadim, like the majority of the American population, isn't intelligent enough to understand the French viewpoint that in general, American-style capitalism is a devastating system of damning misery and, in particular, that they, the French, "knew that capturing Saddam would solve nothing". Tch, tch...

Court Jester in this Banana Republic	Le Fou du Roi dans cette Ripoublika Banania
Dieudonné in an interview with BlackMap states that the Jewish lobby hates blacks and 'To sum things up, they are still 'busting our balls' with Mein Kampf ...'. Thanks to Eric.	Dieudo lors d'une interview avec BlackMap déclare que le lobby juif déteste les noirs et que 'En bref, ils nous 'gonflent' encore avec Mein Kampf ...'. Merci à Eric.

He's Done It

Spanish Leader Orders All 1,300 Troops in Iraq to Withdraw
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 18, 2004

ADRID, Spain -- Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Sunday he had ordered Spanish troops withdrawn from Iraq as soon as possible.

While Zapatero had run for office on a promise to withdraw Spanish forces from the U.S.-led coalition, the timing of the announcement was unexpected.

In an announcement from the Moncloa Palace, Zapatero said he had ordered the defense minister to "do what is necessary for the Spanish troops stationed in Iraq return home in the shortest time possible."

Zapatero spoke just hours after the new Socialist government was sworn in.

Reuters also attributes the following words to Zapatero:

"According to the information we have...it is not likely that a U.N. resolution will be adopted that will meet the conditions we have set for our presence in Iraq."

Chirac is "too libidinous..."

American journalist and Paris resident Ted Stanger, author of "Bloody French!", a book explaining American views to French readers, and most recently of "Bloody Americans!", a book that, obviously, explains French views of the US to a French audience, gave an interview to appear in the Sunday edition of Le Parisien and of which the AFP has seen an advance copy:

On the question of whether many Americans view the French as enemies, [Stanger] answers: "It's worse than that: you, the French, have replaced the Soviet, with his teeth of steel, as the villain in the wrestling matches of old." Another question: what of the Democrat John Kerry, president Bush's future rival in the American presidential elections, and for whom the French "feel great affection," according to the newspaper? Answer: "One of his handicaps is being seen in middle America as... French. And that's not a compliment." And Jacques Chirac? "They wouldn't like him in the US: on the one hand, he's too libidinous; on the other, he's too intelligent." Finally, does Ted Stanger believe that the socialist Lionel Jospin will make his return to the French political stage? "The proof that he's been utterly forgotten," says Stanger, "is that he often goes to the US to attend conferences."

Who died and made him Gertrude Stein?

UPDATE: The article has appeared but for some reason it's all lumped together in a single paragraph. And Stanger comes off as rather loopy.

LP: Are the Americans aware of having become the new Satan for the Arab world?

Stanger: The American does not know geography. He is ignorant of foreign languages and the rest of the world. He is therefore incapable of weighing the consequences of the foreign policy of his president. Since September 11, the question Americans — who sincerely believed they were loved the world over — are asking is: why do they hate us? Even in Vietnam, they had the feeling of doing good. George Bush has promised to come to Paris on June 5 and to celebrate June 6 in Normandy, the sixtieth anniversary of the landings... He has made a calculation: the value of the photos showing him on the beaches of Normandy will be infinitely greater than the reports on the anti-Bush demonstrations. And then, at bottom, American opinion feels that our leader has the right to come to France from time to time to receive thanks for what we did together at the time.

LP: The French feel great affection for John Kerry...

Stanger: First, I insist that the cowboy Bush will win. As for Kerry, one of his handicaps is being perceived in middle America as... French. And that's not a compliment. The November election will be determined not by Iraq but by the price of gas at the pump.

[...]

LP: What is your view of Jacques Chirac?

Stanger: I love Jacques Chirac. He's a statesman and a very fine politician. However, they wouldn't like him in the US: on the one hand, he's too libidinous; on the other, he's too intelligent. The only one who would succeed with us is Jack Lang because he has understood that a nice smile is worth infinitely more than reforms. [...]

They got him

Abdel Aziz Rantisi a vécu.

Jean-David Levitte

"What is at stake now in Iraq is huge," [French ambassador to the US] Jean-David Levitte told students in an address at San Diego State University's Institute on World Affairs. "Because of this, we have to work together, and France is ready to help."

In an interview, Levitte said that once an Iraqi government is elected as planned for June, France will be ready to train and equip Iraqi military police who can help establish and maintain security in the country.

"Security is the main challenge," Levitte said. "There will be no reconstruction without security."

Even so, he reiterated France's opposition to the U.S.-led invasion, saying, "We still consider this war was not necessary."

Levitte said there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States and no evidence linking him to those who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, including Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

France does not intend to send its own troops to Iraq, even as part of a United Nations force, Levitte said.

— San Diego Union Tribune 4/17/04

News Flash!!

W. actually likes something from France!

Poverty on rise in France

In 1970, 15% of the French population was officially poor. By 2001, this figure had dropped to 6.1%, which represents 3.7 million people, according to Bertrand Fragonard, president of the National Observatory for Poverty and Marginalization (part of the Ministry of Employment and Labor). But recent news has substantially darkened matters. On April 8, the Observatory released its third annual report which indicated that poverty has been on the rise again since 2002.

Poverty is measured as the share of the population with a monthly income at less than 50% of the median (which was €600 in 2001). One indicating factor in its rise was a 1.4% increase in 2002 of those seeking a form of public assistance complementary to income. In 2003, the increase was 4.9%. This is projected to rise yet again this year due to controversial reforms in unemployment insurance. The report also found that, while there were 85% fewer poor among the elderly than was the case 30 years ago, there were 38% more among employee households, including those who recently had work.

The working poor — persons active for at least six months out of the year and having held down a position for at least a year — number a million but their income has risen following increases in the minimum wage, property tax reforms, universal health coverage, the reform of housing subsidies and employment premiums.

According to Fragonard, the High Council for Employment, Income and Costs (CERC) estimates that one million children are cared for by families living under the poverty line. Without public assistance, the number of households living poverty would rise to 13.1% The income of the poorest 10% is comprised of at least 50% public funds. Yet increases in the various forms of public assistance, particularly housing subsidies, are insufficient to keep up with rising prices, according to the Observatory.

The report was completed prior to Jacques Chirac's announcement that the planned reform to shorten the duration of the "solidarity" premium — paid to those whose unemployment insurance has run out — would be suspended.

Taken together with a malfunctioning health system, sluggish economy, disastrous public finances, reduced productivity, a delapidated military, scientific research starved of funding, ghastly prisons, stagnant population growth, and faltering race relations, it seems there are a great many emergent causes for unhappiness in France at the moment.

He went down

file under this category. Le Monde reports:

As a silent march of a hundred people was unfolding on April 13 before the house of detention in Epinal (Vosges), the family of Erhan Celik, an 18 year-old from Metz who committed suicide on April 3 while in solitary confinement inside this prison, announced their intention to seek official redress before the administrative court of Strasbourg.

"It's plain to see that all the alarms were going off in this case and that the boy's life was in danger," says attorney Dominique Boh-Petit, lawyer for the parents of the boy. "Since his incarceration a year ago for petty crimes, Erhan attempted on seven occasions to end his life. Though transfered four times, he only received two days of psychiatric attention."

In a letter sent January 9 2004 to the regional office of the Strasbourg penitentiary administration, Mr. Tahsin Celik, Erhan's father, stated his worries: "I am very worried for my son. Since his incarceration in Metz, then in Nancy, he has repeatedly attempted suicide. We are suffering from constant anguish." On January 13, the Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle) prison director answered, saying that "both medical and correctional services are available in his area." Erhan Celik, who continued his attempts in the interim, was transfered on March 25 from Nancy to Epinal, after a two-week stay in a psychiatric ward. Several days after his arrival in les Vosges, he hung himself from the bars in a solitary confinement cell where he had just been sent for knocking over a guard. "By locking this boy up more than a hundred and fifty kilometers from his family and placing him in solitary confinement, where the likelihood of successfully committing suicide is seven times greater than in normal detention, the penitentiary administration knowingly increased the risk factors," said François Charlier, of the International Prison Observatory (OIP). "This matter typifies what not to do and runs counter to the recommendations of the psychiatrist Jean-Louis Terra, author of a report on suicide in prison." According to OIP, 120 prisoners committed suicide in 2003.

NB: 71 prisoners were executed in the United States last year, according to AI, versus France's 120 suicides (and given that the US has five times the population...) MiF noted this last year, saying that this was "a death penalty that dares not speak its name."

Chiraq

It is worth remembering that on Chirac's last visit to Algeria in March of last year, the first by any French president since Algerian independence in 1962, he was met by a cheering crowd of somewhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million people (last November, I attended a lecture by Pascal Bruckner at NYU's maison française: he said the people in the crowd were really shouting, "Visa! Visa!").

Commentators largely attributed his newfound popularity to his opposition to American plans to go to war with Saddam. Indeed, the day after Chirac's visit, president Bouteflika told radio station Europe 1 Chirac deserved the Nobel peace prize for his opposition to war. Among Chirac's critics, was the heroic Cynon Valley (Wales) MP Anne Clwyd (who is also chair of Indict). She wrote wrote that Bouteflika "was perhaps persuaded of the merit of the nomination during a meeting he had in September 2002 with Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, the man responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocent Iraqis. As the French would say, 'plus ça change.'"

Last October, Sa'ad Zaki, a Cairo date seller who and the main supplier to the city's grocery stores, told the AFP that the "the surprise of this Ramadan will the be the Chirac date," which sold for 20 Egyptian pounds ($3.20) per kilo. (The prophet is believed to have broken his Ramadan fast by eating dates and drinking goat's milk). The Chirac was being sold alongside the worst dates which had the same names as last year: the Sharon (10¢ per kilo) and the Bush (15¢). The Chirac was popular, Zaki said, because "the Arabs feel positions taken by Chirac on Iraq and the Palestinian cause are the most moderate." On Iraq, "France opposed the United States, the world superpower." The second highest quality date was the Yasser Arafat (70¢ to $1.50 per kilo).

This was a glaring illustration of France's politique arabe (or "Arab policy"). France has long sought to protect it's strategic, diplomatic and financial interests by adopting Arab causes and Jacques Chirac has been at the central to this strategy since his first days in national politics. On coming to power in 1981, François Mitterrand was desperate to prevent the withdrawal of Arab deposits from French banks. His repeated promises to end the sale of weapons to Iraq and his support for Israel irritated wealthy Arabs and their heads of state who had largely supported his opponent... Jacques Chirac. As it gathered speed, the capital flight risked devaluing the franc itself and Mitterrand was forced to go back on his campaign pledges.

France's famous beneficence toward Saddam wasn't simply a matter of securing Iraqi petrodollars (though that had a lot to do with it). Nor is France's outspoken, and sometimes scandalous, bias in favor of the Palestinian cause. Rather, both arise out of the strategic desire to court the entire Arab world.

During the Iran-Iraq war, France was way out in front of every other Western nation in its support for Saddam against the Iranian mullahs. In 1982, France made considerable sacrifices in order to lend Saddam five (5) fighter jets (from its own operational stocks!). But it wasn't long before they expected something in return. On page 128 of the investigative history Notre allié Saddam, Claude Angeli and Stéphanie Mesnier write

[Defense minister Charles] Hernu and [prime minister Claude] Cheysson then begin a series of visits to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait, accompanied by a few colleagues and by François Gutmann, secretary general the ministry of Foreign Affairs. The French are delighted by the improvement in their image among Arab nations. In 1982, three quarters of French weapons exports were sent to Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

"All the Arabs we met were asking us to give Iraq the Super-Etendard," said one of the diplomats present. "Our policy was informed and well thought-out. Besides, by the end of 1983, after the delivery of those five [Mirage fighter] planes, Cheysson went on a triumphal tour of the Gulf. The principal was the following: to cash in on the credit we had earned in the region. It rained contracts."

This policy lives on to this day, as Jonathan's translation below makes clear. From April 21 to 26, Defense minister Michèle Alliot-Marie will be touring the midde-east, visiting the UAE, Oman, Qatar and Jordan.

Since the passage of the ban on the hidjab, France's position in the Arab world has deterioated somewhat.

But I digress: the article Jonathan translates below is revealing, given the current context. Mohamed Benchicou, editor in chief of the Algerian daily Le Matin, and author of Bouteflika: an Algerian fraud, recently said the following during a live chat on lemonde.fr:

Libre: Isn't Jacques Chirac's trip to Algeria an absolute endorsement of the results of the presidential election? In a wider sense, what is the relationship between president Bouteflika and France?

Mohamed Benchicou: President Chirac's brutal visit to Algeria has surprised the Algerians and particularly Algerian democrats, who do indeed see a kind of endorsement in this, not only of president Bouteflika, but of the fraud the returned him to office. Algerian republicans hope still hope that president Chirac's trip to Algiers will serve to relay a message to Bouteflika on the respect for his commitment to democracy, pluralism, and freedom of the press, and [to urge him] to avoid the temptation of Stalinist hegemony that returned him 85% of the vote in the first round of voting and the complete annihilation of the opposition. Let's hope that this message will be borne by president Chirac. As for Franco-Algerian relations, it is obvious that, in diplomatic and political terms, they've seen a fantastic rise, because, over the last five years, president Bouteflika has visited France seven times and President Chirac has visited Algeria twice, which is remarkable and which has brought diplomatic relations to a level heretofore unseen. But such good relations have remained strictly diplomatic. Algerians saw nothing of it. They have had no economic or commercial results, no new investments, nor have they seen the return of French companies to Algeria or the lifting of strict requirements for Algerians obtaining visas. There's just been a recrudescence of relations, of state visits and diplomatic ones.